No, I'm saying that it provides a way to show off the power of OpenMw. This engine isn't something revolutionary, but if you solve something that is considered to be the most common problem with Morrowind you will show off this engine in its best light.

DosBuster wrote:No, I'm saying that it provides a way to show off the power of OpenMw. This engine isn't something revolutionary, but if you solve something that is considered to be the most common problem with Morrowind you will show off this engine in its best light.

I would LOVE improved combat. We await your changes to the engine enabling this, as well as pull request. The Example Suite can begin working on it as soon as this has been merged with the main engine fork.

DosBuster wrote:No, I'm saying that it provides a way to show off the power of OpenMw. This engine isn't something revolutionary, but if you solve something that is considered to be the most common problem with Morrowind you will show off this engine in its best light.

I would LOVE improved combat. We await your changes to the engine enabling this, as well as pull request. The Example Suite can begin working on it as soon as this has been merged with the main engine fork.

Alright then, tell me what fancy new things can OpenMW do? I'm assuming the purpose of this Example Suite is to advertise it, so who are we advertising towards and what are we advertising? People are going to be confused when we come out showing off the feature set of an engine from 2002 and acting like it's some revolutionary creation only possible by the greatest minds on earth.

DosBuster wrote:Alright then, tell me what fancy new things can OpenMW do? I'm assuming the purpose of this Example Suite is to advertise it, so who are we advertising towards and what are we advertising? People are going to be confused when we come out showing off the feature set of an engine from 2002 and acting like it's some revolutionary creation only possible by the greatest minds on earth.

Normal and specular maps. OSG file format. Preloading cells. Hopefully more to come, with better customization after dehardcoding, improved scripting language, native distant land options, terrain generation via OpenMW-CS, improved combat, new spells, etc. These are post 1.0 goals and the engine team is working on getting to 1.0 first, which implies a fully functional engine that can do anything that the base Morrowind engine and vanilla Construction Set could do. But you want to jump straight into post 1.0 goals without completing 1.0 goals first, and ignore showcasing base 1.0 features in the demo in favor of better combat, which the engine doesn´t even have yet. I am perfectly fine with getting better combat before 1.0 arrives, go ahead and make it come true.

OpenMW Example Suite is a demo for OpenMW that can be run without having to own Morrowind. This way potential game developers can test out OpenMW without having to buy Morrowind. They have no idea about the base features of OpenMW 1.0, so even if it´s already present in Morrowind, we want to show the possibilities in the demo as well. It would also give a good example on how to make use of features that are not in Morrowind. So we include both features that are in present in Morrowind and features that are not present.

I think you´re misunderstanding this. We are not trying to make new never before seen features. This is totally out of the project´s scope, you can join the engine team if you want to do that. We are simply showcasing what´s there. And if you join the engine team and make a never-before-seen feature, then we will showcase it in the Example Suite. I was serious in my previous post. If you make better combat possible, then we will showcase it in the Example Suite. If it´s not made possible via the engine, then we cannot show it. When you proposed better combat, how else did you expect to implement it other than by changing engine code, making a pull request and getting it on the main fork so we could model and animate it?

PeterBitt wrote:Maybe this is a deal breaker for this open source project: I dont want my models to be used in other games, not even mods. I have good reasons for that

I'm really curious as to why asset creators are so rarely willing to allow other projects to use their assets. As long as due credit is given, what's more beautiful than seeing your work pop up left and right?

Biboran wrote:A lot of asset creators, like in Skywind, do it for portfolio, not for community. They want work in Bethesda or Valve etc.

A lot of asset creators don't realize the potential of open source too. To share their asset might not contribute to their pockets, but it certainly helps a lot of other people (especially modders) to get some level of success.

Sadly, most of these suffer of some kind of syndrome that makes them strive to be asset supervillains, locking all of them behind closed doors and waiting for them to be forgotten. I'll call it the asset acid syndrome from now on. The explanation would be that they have the weird tendency of losing their files, and that dipping their hard drive in acid seems to be a "unlikely" way of losing the files... Of course!

But also, attribution might indeed be their key to getting a job somewhere, if you want my opinion. Not that I think they should get a job in a game company. They got too much talent to be wasted on games like, say, Destiny. Or games like Bethesda's that end up today (unfortunately) in a kind of empty way. Fallout 4 was great, fun... But once you played the game, you did not want to see the rest of it. I booted it up twice after my fifth game that I didn't finish because the game sucked. Once for automatron. And once for the survival mode. Automatron was great, and the survival mode was utter shit. Unfortunate, as Bethesda is one of my favorite video game companies of all times, although not for Morrowind, but rather for Fallout 3 (yes, even thought many say this game sucked. I just couldn't get the hang of oblivion with guns with less potato-y faces).

However, unrelated to what I said first, I'm ready to try my unexperienced hands at making equipment. (shields, swords, hats, because we still don't have the bodies) And the example suite should absolutely have a properly scaling body. What games don't have those these days? But just make sure each muscles can scale individually, please, else https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Df-9UNfEnCk? Okay, but on a serious note, a scaling body could indeed be a good thing to show off capabilities of the engine (IMO). Hopefully when OSG will have animations, it'll support scaling, right? And it'd stop game devs from having to do an half assed body model like M&B did... And probably do furry things too, these are usually good to show off the capabilties of an engine too... No idea why. Peeps just like fur.

EDIT: Just thought about it. The old Morrowind modding community always had been pretty friendly to other modders, so you guys might want to contact Robert about the Robert's Male body replace for Oblivion. Probably wouldn't take too much work to make work with OpenMW (I hope). You'd probably need to try out the Nexus, or Emma's email, but either ways, it might be a better idea than to just try to make one when assets are already available.

I've already had some success in contacting people for opening up their work for use in the Template. They worst they can say is "No", but sometimes they say things like: "That's awesome, how can I help?".

Most notably from nexusmods are:

hicks233 - sky, weather and star textures
Tyddy - moon textures

They both offered to CC-BY their work.

Things get more complicated when models are involved, the mod authors want to help but their work is derived in someway from Bethesda's IP original models. So after this experience, we've been trying to remake them from scratch to avoid any butt-hurt company lawyers.

Okulo wrote:I'm really curious as to why asset creators are so rarely willing to allow other projects to use their assets. As long as due credit is given, what's more beautiful than seeing your work pop up left and right?

Its mainly the "anyone can do anything with your work" part that is a big turn off for me. When some modder asks me personally if they can use a model of mine in their mod I most likely say yes, like happened multiple times in the past.
But having every random dude use my models, which I worked hard and had to learn plenty to get done, without even asking me or letting me know is just no way to treat other peoples work respectfully imo. I am a very opinionated guy, what if some person I would despise used my most loved models in some monetized game that is a piece of crap? Do I really want to see my stuff there? Would you?
Also have you ever thought this through, wouldnt all those free-licensing games all look the same after a while when everyone uses the same model pool? My models are made for unique appearances in ONE game, not in hundred different games which all look alike.

Also I want to make a game myself, but no one offers me a talented coder who works for me for free. Why should artists upload their work to the masses?

Its not that I am well informed about the subject but from what I know this seems like a bad idea for me personally. The free models I found on the web are mostly of bad quality or rather easy stuff, didnt find any full tilesets or even a complete environment set, like the one I had in mind for this example suite. But I definitely will not create a whole set of assets for other people to make a complete game from. I only do my work for OpenMW or not at all

Also credit given or not, no user will realize I which models I made. Same is true in modding: The user assumes the uploader made the mod, he wont go to the readme to see who did what.
Am I that narcissistic to care about that? Yes :p